The Haunter of the Threshold (2 page)

“Now watch,” Wally whispered. “Here they go...”

A beer-bellied guy in a wife-beater T-shirt was the first to kneel between the woman’s legs. The vantage point was much better this time, for Wally could see the action directly. He could also see...

How do you like that?

The man in the wife-beater wore a ring just like the original rube: a marble-sized scarlet stone.

“This is gonna be great!” Joe whispered and grinned. “A pussy-eating party on a pregnant girl!” Joe had his cock right back out and in his hand, ready to go.

With great intensity, then, they both stared. Neither of them were the least bit aware that someone was standing right behind them.

1

PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND

TWO MONTHS PREVIOUS

Just as you begin to urinate, the bearded man with the gun lopes into the bathroom.

The pistol goes
click!
and is immediately pressed to your head. Shock bulges your eyes; shock freezes your nerves; shock cuts off the stream of your urine.

“Don’t scream,” the intruder advises. “Don’t fight. Do everything I tell you. Do you understand?”

Your throat wobbles once, then you gasp out, “Yes, but, please, don’t—”

The pistol barrel ticks right against your teeth. “And don’t talk. I’m not kidding.”

The voice sounds dry, slightly muffled, like someone speaking through a scarf. In this instantaneous and utterly unprepared-for horror, you’re able to note no details regarding his physical characteristics, race, or attire. All you noticed was the beard when he’d loped right into the bathroom an instant after you’d sat down on the toilet. After that, you see nothing more than the pistol: large and black, and its oddly extended barrel.

“Now,” he orders. “Finish pissing.”

The command astonishes you, but rather than protesting, you close your eyes, take a deep breath, and
push.

Nothing comes out.

“I-I’m sorry. I’m just too nervous—”

His hand blurs, and
cracks
you across the face.

“Concentrate,” issues the cool monotone. “And lean forward with your hands on your knees. And arch your back.”

Your teeth chatter, but in spite of your terror, you do as commanded, while your mind ticks back to the moments before this event barged into the middle of your unassuming life...

You’d walked home from campus just as the sun was setting. You felt tired yet fulfilled because you know you’re getting the hang of teaching. In your apartment you lock the door behind you at once—there have been rapes just off campus—and you kick off your shoes and strip in the middle of the room, reveling in the gracious stun of cool air after escaping the heat and humidity outside. It’s the cool air which constricts your nipples and covers you with delightful gooseflesh.
God, I have to pee,
you think, striding to the bathroom. At once your image is captured in the bathroom mirror and you stop to appraise your reflection.

You
hate
your hair, the unruly red frizz which can only be managed by tying it back behind your head; on any other woman it would become a silken ponytail but on you, it looks like a bristle brush. Yes, you hate your hair and its queer ox-blood-red color, yet everyone else, men and women alike, seem to find it fascinating. Your wedge of pubic hair matches the color, and puffs out in abundance. Shaving or waxing seems all the rage these days, especially with women your age, yet you know you’ll never do that, as if the existence of your pubic hair proves something—a ludicrous thought.

You hate your frame too—you think you’re too skinny—and you hate the barely perceptible freckles which cover you from head to foot. Like your hair, everyone else finds them fascinating, or “Exotic,” several men have said.

But now was not the time to contemplate your self-image: your bladder feels fit to burst, so just as you move to sit on the toilet, a sparkle in the mirror stops you.

It’s the cross glittering.

Your father gave it to you long ago, when you at least in part believed in what it symbolized.
How can I now, though?
you wonder, feeling suddenly tainted...Your father’s last phone message reverberates in your mind: “Please, come back to church. Come back to God. It’s where you belong, honey...,” so similar to so many other messages which you never had the nerve to answer.

This was when you sat on the toilet and began to urinate, after which the bearded man with the gun waltzed in...

“And spread your legs—yeah, like that,” he says. “Shit, I love that big red bush. And put your feet back a little too. Push up off the balls of your feet.”

Mind-numb, you obey the inexplicable commands.

“It’s the image—understand? The image of the pose. I want that image while you’re pissing. I need to
see
the pee coming out...”

He’s crazy,
you think.

“Now. Finish pissing. If you don’t, then I’ll—”

If I don’t...he’ll kill me,
you know.

You concentrate, reclosing your eyes. You think of a garden hose cranked all the way open. You think of lawn sprinkler. You think of broken water pipes.

“Come on.”

Out it comes, then, the glittering cascade. You can feel the warm void race out of you as if it’s escaping this terrible predicament that you cannot escape yourself. Likewise, you hear the near-musical sound of it tinkling down into the toilet water.

“Good. Now, with one hand, play with my cock.”

You hitch when you reopen your eyes. He’d already gotten it out, and there it hangs—so suddenly—right in your face. It’s limp but fat, with a collar of wrinkled skin. Wiry hairs stick out all around it, as if disgorged through the zipper. You begin to knead it with your fingertips, then—perhaps out of instinct—you incline forward, opening your mouth.

“What are you doing?”

“I...Don’t you want me to—”

“If I wanted you to suck it, I would have said so.
Play
with it, but just with that hand. The other one stays on your knee. And pull the balls out and play with those too.”

You dig into the opened zipper, then gingerly extract his testicles. You cup them, squeeze a few times ever so gently, then let your hand coruscate around their hot, meaty weight. You smell soap, and even in the midst of this atrocious crime think:
At least he washed first. How do you like that? A hygienic rapist...

But that’s what this is, beyond a doubt. A rape.
You always hear
about it on the news or read it in the paper,
you reflect.
It’s always
something that happens to someone else...But now it’s happening
to me.

“Good. Now stand up.”

You’d emptied your bladder without realizing it, and when you look again you notice that his penis is fully erect and beating noticeably, well more than average size.

Smack!

You whine at this next smack across your face. “What did I
do?
”

“I said stand up,” and then his hand lands in your hair and pulls, yanking you to your feet. Your face buzzes from the slaps, and your scalp aches.

“Open the medicine cabinet.”

You watch your shock-wide eyes and moist face slide away as you open the mirrored door.

“Let’s see,” he says to himself. “There, the Vaseline. Take the top off and put the jar on the floor, then sit back on the toilet.”

What on earth...,
yet you do so, but when you look back up for his next command, all you see is his bobbing erection.

“With your right hand, keep stroking my cock, and with your left hand take the rubber out of my right pocket.”

Rubber?
You find the packet, and feel now with your other hand that his penis is even harder. When you squeeze it, it doesn’t give at all.

“Now put the rubber on my cock,” he says, the gun still hovering around your face. “And do it right.” A chuckle. “You’ve probably never even
seen
a rubber before. What I hear is you let all those students of yours fuck you bareback.”

When you glare at him—

Smack!

—you get another, harder crack across the face. The impact stifles you this time, you reel a moment, then fumble frantically to remove the condom and roll it down over his penis.

Now it looks alien as it throbs before your eyes. It looks like something cooked and packaged. At this moment, that’s what the whole world is: this rapist’s erection sheathed in latex.

“Hands and knees,” he tells you, and when you assume the position as ordered, he continues, “Turn your head to the right, then put your cheek to the floor,” and after you obey, “Stick your fingers in the Vaseline jar and pull out a glob. Rub it all over your asshole, and when you’re done doing that, I want you to reach back and pull your butt apart.”

Your heart hammers. When you’re finished...

“Ugh!”

He’d already kneed up behind you and slammed his penis in. The abrupt pressure startles you. Your assailant wastes no time; he’s pistoning in and out of you quite quickly, drawing the corona all the way out with each stroke, only to plunge it immediately back in. After but ten strokes, you tighten your rectum—you’ve tended to enjoy anal sex with lovers, and constricting your anus was something you’d read in
Cosmo
to increase the man’s pleasure. It makes sense, doesn’t it? To
please
this rapist, for if you don’t he’ll only be more liable to kill you. So you tighten it as hard as you can—

The man moans, and immediately steps up his pace. You feel his testicles slapping your vagina. Then—

He grunts, hitches, the strokes retard and eventually stop. Moments later, you feel his penis begin to deflate inside you.

This is when you make your most grave mistake.

You chuckle.

“Funny?” he snaps. “What’s funny?” and then you squeal as he grabs your hair again and hauls you to your feet. “What? I came fast, so that’s
funny?
”

“No, no,” you sob.

He slams you so hard against the bathroom door, all your wind goes out. You see him put the gun down, but in the tense paralysis that companions your impact with the door, you can’t even think much less commence in a defensive move. Stars burst before your eyes...

“Let’s see how funny
this
is,” and then something goes around your neck, and in the buzz of your terror you realize what it is: the sash from your robe.

You gasp, tears pouring now. “I wasn’t—I wasn’t laughing, I swear–”

Crack!

Another slap to the face. “Yes, you were. You were laughing at me for coming fast. Well, fuck it, I was gonna let you go, but I think I’ll just hang you instead.”

It’s almost with an expertise that he loops the sash over the hook on the door. You can’t help but deduce,
He’s done this before.
Your breath barely returns when both of his hands pull down on the other end of the sash.

The makeshift noose tightens as you rise and your feet leave the bathroom’s cool tile. Your fingers fly to relieve the noose but it’s too tight. Your face begins to swell.

You hear his words now like something muttered in a fish bowl: “Yeah, I guess I’ll just hang you, since you’re not gonna be a good girl.”

Your bare heels pound the door. You’re kicking, however, uselessly, for your
life,
and somehow you manage to force words through the noose constricting your throat: “I’ll be a good girl, I’ll be a good girl—”

Thunk!

He lets the sash go and you collapse to the floor.

The near-strangulation leaves you more disoriented than your worst drunk. Equilibrium is long gone, you’re propped on the floor like a lone survivor on a raft rocking in high seas. There’s a drone in your head that sounds, somehow, evil, and you know that’s what this is: the coal-black evil of lust, perversity, and mental illness dropped like a depth charge into the middle of your life. He grabs the stout brush of hair banded behind your head and shakes it. “Don’t pass out. We’re not done. Look up here,” and you squeal again when he gives your hair a hard twist.

“Take the rubber off. Grab it by the end with your thumb and forefinger and then—listen!—upend it over the toilet. Let the cum fall out of it into the toilet.”